ARM Researching Novel Chip Memory

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ARM Researching Novel Chip Memory

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday February 1, 2014 @10:17PM from the bringing-in-the-heavy-hitters dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ARM may be best known as processor designer but the company is now working on a non-volatile memory that could scale down to 5nm, according to an Electronics 360 report. The memory is something different called Correlated-electron RAM that was originally developed by a professor at University of Colorado. ARM is joining a research collaboration to try and make the memory an option at ARM-friendly foundries."

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I love ARM by EmperorOfCanada · 2014-02-01 22:22 · Score: 3, Interesting

I love that ARM didn't initially go head to head with Intel and thus ended up not getting crushed by them (think transmeta/AMD). I thus have hopes that this not only works because it is cool but because ARM is cool and deserves another win for what they have done.
1. Re: I love ARM by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-01 23:12 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Same anon: I'm an idiot, please disregard that post.
2. Re:I love ARM by Megol · 2014-02-01 23:13 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  ARM started as Acorn in 1978, the same time that Intel created the 8086 processor. The current popular ARM processors are actually MIPS processors which likewise goes back to the early 1980s. So this stuff is oooooold.
  MIPS?!? Did you just make that up? Do you think x86 are MIPS too?!?
  ARM and MIPS are processors and there the similarities end.
3. Re:I love ARM by sumdumass · 2014-02-01 23:14 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Interesting take on it. ARM was originally loved because it effectively ran circles around x86 style processors at a fraction of the power. It's been a while and I'm not sure if this is still the case but I often root for old time favorites of long ago just out of habit.
  Judging from the prevalence of ARM technology in today's hardware, I would think it is still better then the Intel and AMD alternatives.
4. Re:I love ARM by ButchDeLoria · 2014-02-01 23:20 · Score: 1
  
  Also both RISC.
5. Re: I love ARM by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-01 23:31 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The Intel equivalents are roughly equal in terms of performance but are relatively expensive to buy for manufacturers. The base of Android would have to be recompiled for x86 (relatively easy) but there are some Android games/apps that are made Arm specific for performance gains and wouldn't run without development on other platforms.
  Its just a more costly less compatible alternative, if Intel want to make any gains they would need to demonstrate real performance benefits than just performance parity. I did hear they intended to start producing Arm based chips to get a foothold which would be a smart start but unlikely given pride.
6. Re:I love ARM by Ginger+Unicorn · 2014-02-01 23:50 · Score: 1
  
  Hey! I love ARM because Acorns were full of ARM. Apple indeed...
  
  --
  (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
7. Re:I love ARM by myurr · 2014-02-02 00:09 · Score: 2
  
  It was the first processor I learned to write assembly for, back on the Acorn Archimedes. Brilliant computers, so far ahead of their time, and I wouldn't be half the programmer I am now were it not for learning on those machines.
8. Re:I love ARM by itsdapead · 2014-02-02 00:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I love that ARM didn't initially go head to head with Intel and thus ended up not getting crushed by them (think transmeta/AMD).
  
  Actually, they did start out (as Acorn) by going head-to-head with Intel. Others have mentioned Acorn but not really pointed out that the original 1987 ARM was a credible competitor to the 80286 and 68000. (By "credible competitor" I mean "left the 68k and 286 choking on its dust"). It was only ever really used in that way in the Acorn Archemedes and RiscPC which never made it big outside of the UK - although it outlived most of the other non-Wintel personal computers.
  OK - when ARM was spun off they did, as you say, rather sensibly, end up going after the embedded market, but ARM might never have happened if Acorn had gone with the 80286 for their BBC Micro successor.
  
  --
  In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
9. Re:I love ARM by wonkey_monkey · 2014-02-02 01:24 · Score: 1
  
  MOV PC,R14
  Ahhh... that's the stuff.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
10. Re:I love ARM by Bengie · 2014-02-02 01:26 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Intel's new 250mw CPUs have more mips and flops than ARM with the same power rating, and the Intel CPU has better idle power draw. Intel is starting to beat ARM at their own game and with full x86 CPUs. ARM is trying to break into Intel territory and looks to have "decent" power draw and performance, but many of their current CPUs do not scale well past 1ghz. Like their ARM A9 consumes 4x the power just to gain an extra 10% performance on the high end. These "low power" CPUs are great at low frequencies, but are horrible at higher frequencies. People assumed they'd scale mostly linearly and compete with Intel by just clocking up.
  
  ARM is still doing a lot of research and there is no reason they won't be able to compete with Intel on the desktop, but they're not there quite yet. They're just breaking into the server market, this will be interesting.
11. Re:I love ARM by nojayuk · 2014-02-02 02:12 · Score: 2
  
  ARM is a design operation, it produces no silicon of its own. Intel is an end-to-end company both designing and fabricating its own product with world-leading fabs, die shrinks, finFETs etc. Intel hasn't bothered much with low-power performance up till now as there wasn't a demand for it until relatively recently -- performance was for the data centre, supercomputers and workstations, low power consumption was for embedded devices and braindead phones and handhelds. Laptops were in the middle but a three-hour battery life was deemed acceptable if a powerful CPU was required.
  The markets have changed and Intel is putting serious effort and expertise behind a push to lower-power versions of its stock-in-trade x86 platform while ARM is moving into unknown territory trying to wring performance out of its core designs which were always optimised for low power operation first and foremost. At the moment it seems Intel is winning.
12. Re:I love ARM by dpilot · 2014-02-02 02:24 · Score: 1
  
  Oh wow! Shades of: //STEP01 EXEC PGM=IEFBR14
  Also proof that a program that does absolutely nothing can indeed have bugs. Look up the history some time. (It's on Wikipedia.)
  
  --
  The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
13. Re:I love ARM by fast+turtle · 2014-02-02 02:45 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Most ARM fans keep repeating the same fucking mantra - It uses less power then x86. Bullshit. It's not just the CPU that results in power demand for mobile systems (Tablets, phones and what not) it's the GPU, Screen, disk and all the other parts that go into the thing and Intel has finally paid enough attention to overall power budget that they're actually beating most of the ARM based SoC's out there in both power savings and performance.
  Look at the power demand of the Nvidia Tegra SoC's. Tegra3 was decent but limited GPU performance. Tegra 4 though blows through a batter like Richard Pryor did with hookers and Coke.
  Even Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoC doesn't do any better as the GPU blows the power budget. Intel's Atom CPU's are competitive with ARM in performance and power budget. What screwed them was the fucking north bridge and GPU. That actually used more power then the CPU did yet they've fixed that with the latest Atom's due to a new SoC design focused on Power savings and yes I've used an early Atom Netbook - painful even with XP on it. The new ones are pretty decent now.
  
  --
  Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
14. Re: I love ARM by fast+turtle · 2014-02-02 02:50 · Score: 1
  
  At least you realize it. Maybe now you can do something about it.
  Old Proverb "Wise Man keeps mouth closed instead of opening it and proving they're an idiot".
  In my case, the only excersise I get now if from "flying off the handle, then jumping to conclusions, followed by butting in" so I wonder why everyone dislikes me?
  
  --
  Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
15. Re:I love ARM by Bengie · 2014-02-02 02:50 · Score: 1
  
  I like your summary better :)
16. Re: I love ARM by edmudama · 2014-02-02 03:04 · Score: 1
  
  It's Proverbs 17:28
  
  --
  More data, damnit!
17. Re:I love ARM by dreamchaser · 2014-02-02 03:19 · Score: 1
  
  ARM processors are not MIPS architecture. The latter still exists and has little in common with ARM other than both being RISC.
18. Re:I love ARM by The123king · 2014-02-02 03:31 · Score: 1
  
  I love ARM because it powers everything from my iPad to my HTC One to my WD HDD to my TV to my Raspberry Pi to my CD ROM drive to my router to my... *mumble mumble drone drone*
  
  --
  If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
19. Re: I love ARM by The123king · 2014-02-02 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  The problem with Intel is they've sat on their laurels with the x86 architecture for too long. I give them many points for trying to capture the high-end market with Itanium, but they didn't realise it was going to be the low end market that would come around and steal away the next big market. They were too busy protecting their face to realise they were gonna get kicked in the balls.
  
  --
  If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
20. Re:I love ARM by The123king · 2014-02-02 03:45 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  It's still too little too late. Look at Apple when they moved to PowerPC. Apple's computers could run circles around the competing x86 chips, but by then the x86 architecture had become so prevalent there was no hope in hell that PowerPC would dominate. It's the same with between x86 and ARM in the mobile world. Sure, there will be x86 chips that are faster and more power efficient, but everyone's so ingrained into ARM that they'll never really make inroads into the market.
  
  --
  If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
21. Re:I love ARM by Megol · 2014-02-02 06:03 · Score: 1
  
  So the idea is that having a zero register makes the processor a MIPS one? There have been zero valued registers/accumulators/storage locations in many processors long before RISC was "invented" which isn't that strange as a zero value is a very common immediate data value.
22. Re:I love ARM by Megol · 2014-02-02 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  The original ARM ISA is pretty complex for a RISC design and isn't as strongly pipeline optimized as many RISC (even ignoring the lack of branch delay slots). Few registers, multi-clock instructions (load/store multiple), addressing modes with register updates, not being heavily optimized for pipelining and no explicit zero register are just a few more or less unique features of the original ARM compared to other RISC processors. Making almost every instruction support conditional execution is pretty much unique for any processor.
  AARCH64? That one is more like a "standard" RISC. Still not even close to a MIPS design.
23. Re:I love ARM by fdrebin · 2014-02-02 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  ... but everyone's so ingrained into ARM that they'll never really make inroads into the market.
  "Never Say Never Again"
  Or... look up "You can't be fired for buying IBM"
  Or... "DEC Forever" or (one that a was told to me personally in 1989) "PCs will never have the power of Workstations!"
  
  --
  Stupidity... has a habit of getting its way.
24. Re:I love ARM by 0123456 · 2014-02-02 07:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I've heard this before, but Intel likes to play games with power numbers. AMD's TDP is the limit of the processor if EVERYTHING were on. Intel's is under normal usage.
  Yeah, right.
  That's why, when you actually measure the power consumption, you usually find Intel CPUs are far more efficient than AMD's.
25. Re:I love ARM by viperidaenz · 2014-02-02 07:57 · Score: 2
  
  Intel held on to the ARM licenses they had when building the StrongARM and XScale CPU's a decade ago.
26. Re:I love ARM by viperidaenz · 2014-02-02 08:00 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe that's because AMD don't have to technology to turn off all the unused parts of the chip or use all the execution units all at once so everything is all on all the time.
27. Re: I love ARM by AmiMoJo · 2014-02-02 10:12 · Score: 1
  
  Android for x86 has a binary translation layer for native ARM code that seems to do a pretty good job. There is no need to even re-compile such apps and performance seems to be near native.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
28. Re:I love ARM by AmiMoJo · 2014-02-02 10:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The problem is that no matter how good Intel chips are only Intel makes them. ARM is widely licensed and a manufacturer has a vast selection of processors and most important system-on-chip silicone to choose from, at all performance and price levels. There is also the language issue, with far eastern manufacturers preferring support and documentation in their native languages and from local companies.
  More over you generalize too much. Saying "ARM A9 consumes 4x the power" is meaningless because there is no "ARM A9" chip, only various implementations of the A9 spec and they are all different.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
29. Re:I love ARM by Darinbob · 2014-02-02 12:52 · Score: 1
  
  They did go head-to-head, just not on the PC.
30. Re:I love ARM by EmperorOfCanada · 2014-02-02 19:20 · Score: 1
  
  I think have hit on a hugely important factor. By having many different manufacturers there is no worry about ARM playing some games like cutting you off, or strongarming you into some new marketing ploy. If one manufacturer tries to screw you there are many others happy to do business.
  
  On a side note the server I have long been waiting for is a 16+ CPU arm server. A typical web site is continuously getting a zillion microscopic requests that shouldn't trouble a low end ARM chip. So why not spread them out across a bunch of CPUs? Plus you can power down the bulk of the chips during slow periods.
  
  They have this new 8-core 64-bit Seattle chip that sounds like it is a beast. It is 1/10th the cost of a similar Xeon chip. I would much prefer a server with 10 of those than one Xeon. Think of that 80 cores running PHP scripts. The response time under load of that server would be fantastic.
31. Re:I love ARM by TheRaven64 · 2014-02-02 20:56 · Score: 1
  
  By having many different manufacturers there is no worry about ARM playing some games like cutting you off, or strongarming you into some new marketing ploy. If one manufacturer tries to screw you there are many others happy to do business.
  
  This is part of ARM's strategy with ARMv8. They intentionally delayed their own designs so that they wouldn't compete with their partners. Now, if you want to license a 64-bit core from ARM, they have a low-power in-order design and a better-performing out-of-order superscalar design, but several of their partners also have their own ARMv8 implementations that were built with advice from ARM engineers but are independent implementations. They will each have different power/price/performance trades, helping to diversify the ARM ecosystem. Between multiple independent implementations of the core designs, and multiple potential companies to fab them, the ARM ecosystem is in quite a strong position.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
32. Re:I love ARM by TheRaven64 · 2014-02-02 21:06 · Score: 1
  
  Great for assembly programmers, not so great for pipeline designers. One of the weaknesses of the ARM design is that making the PC a general-purpose register meant that every instruction needs a little bit of extra logic in the decoder to tell you whether it's a branch, which then complicates the branch predictor. It's fun being able to do a ldr with the pc as the destination register, right up until you have to implement a long pipeline with that instruction. This is why ARMv8 makes the pc a special register (but still provides pc-relative loads and stores).
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
33. Re:I love ARM by TheRaven64 · 2014-02-02 21:14 · Score: 1
  
  That's an idea that predates MIPS. You'd do better if you claimed MIPS heritage because AArch64 removes the PC as a GPR, but (unlike MIPS) it does provide PC-relative addressing (MIPS does PC-relative memory accesses by forcing the calling convention to make every function call in position-independent code a JALR $25, so that $25 is guaranteed to contain the PC on function entry). MIPS also lacks the complex addressing modes of AArch64 (and AArch32). Unlike AArch64, it has branch delay slots, doesn't have the store/load pair instructions, condition code registers (all conditions in MIPS are stored in GPRs), bitfield manipulation instructions, and so on. ARM and MIPS are both derivatives of Berkeley RISC, but they have diverged a lot from that common inspiration.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
34. Re: I love ARM by astar · 2014-02-03 06:02 · Score: 1
  
  I love ARM. Validating the first Cpu designs in your head when IBM teams were in Fail mode inventing pipelining. Noticing that their chip was unexpectedly working even with a fail power supply. Low royalities and not big revenue even though they have designed most of the computers on the planet.
SRAM by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-01 22:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

efficient SRAM would be a bigger deal. DRAM is holding us back right now.
Novel chip memory by rossdee · 2014-02-01 23:16 · Score: 3, Funny

Soon to be seen in Kindles and Nooks
Speed? by jcr · 2014-02-02 00:08 · Score: 1

The article mentions the feature size and its temperature tolerance, but I'm not seeing anything about performance. Anyone here know?
-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
bahahahh by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-02 00:38 · Score: 1, Interesting

gotta love you ARM fanboys, as misguided as you are.
ARM's days are numbered. It can try to come up with whatever hacks it wants, but in the end, they can't beat physics. And if anyone understands that, it's Intel. MIPS won't change that. So prepare to watch ARM flail around while it loses significant market share to Intel over the next year.
As for Nvidia... they love to overhype and underdeliver in hopes people will just settle for what they're offered. Nvidia will partake in the same woes as ARM over the next year, too.
The only winner in this game is Intel. They have the know-how, fabs, and process perfected. They also have the gameplan mapped out. They're no idiots.
1. Re:bahahahh by crutchy · 2014-02-02 01:09 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  yeah and linux is just a fad!
  microsoft ftw! :-)
  
  The only winner in this game is Intel.
  might want to google "china"
2. Re:bahahahh by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-02 01:42 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Wow, I had a good laugh at your misguided fanboism.
  Even if ARM stopped making any chip technology to be used in computers, tablets and smartphones they would still be the leader in the chips in all those other devices you rely on in your daily life.
  Pull your head out and you'll see that ARM is everywhere. Are they the best? Not always, but they are often the best for what they are used for.
3. Re:bahahahh by dreamchaser · 2014-02-02 03:21 · Score: 2
  
  That's like saying Windows is the best for what it is used for because it has a large market share. ARM is prevalent in mobile devices because when smartphones and tablets started to rise in popularity Intel at the time had no low power option to use as their answer to ARM. I'm not so sure ARMs 'days are numbered,' I'm just pointing out that numbers does not necessarily mean ARM is the best at what they are used for anymore. Intel has closed a great deal of ground in that regard.
4. Re:bahahahh by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-02 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  ARM is the most sold processor architecture on the planet.
  Every modern car has like 20 to 100 ARM cores build in, and - if at all - (for the radio) a single Intel procesor.
  iPhones, iPads and plenty of other mobile devices run on: ARM.
  Claiming that Intel makes the long run is just nonsense. And if Intel is not sooner or later abandoning the stupid x86 architecture altogether they will go where Microsoft is going or where MIPS already went.
5. Re:bahahahh by Pinky's+Brain · 2014-02-02 06:32 · Score: 2
  
  Intel has good technology ... but everyone is going to be a loser in the coming years and Intel is becoming a tempting target for a leveraged buyout, which might well destroy them as an IDM.
6. Re:bahahahh by viperidaenz · 2014-02-02 08:07 · Score: 2
  
  MIPS and ARM are different architectures.
7. Re:bahahahh by viperidaenz · 2014-02-02 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  MIPS were pretty popular in ECU's, so were 6502 and 68k. With the speed at which the auto industry moves, they probably still are.
8. Re:bahahahh by crutchy · 2014-02-02 23:46 · Score: 1
  
  i disagree about arm's days being numbered and all that, but in all fairness a lot of embedded applications are likely also powered by traditional microcontrollers supplied by freescale (motorola), atmel, st micro, ti, pic, etc.
5nm? Die Shrink? by v4vijayakumar · 2014-02-02 02:17 · Score: 1

a non-volatile memory that could scale down to 5nm?
Why 5nm is significant? Is it something to do with die shrink? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
1. Re:5nm? Die Shrink? by Bengie · 2014-02-02 02:44 · Score: 2
  
  Probably near the distance where quantum tunneling becomes an issue. When your design requires a layer of insulation and electrons can pass through it, then your design breaks.
Re:The exact goals, duration and budget... by Bengie · 2014-02-02 02:46 · Score: 1

The lone inventor is mostly something for a new area of research. Once an area of research is mature, it's near impossible to compete with larger commercial entities.
Might be a waste for bulk CMOS by PeterGasperini · 2014-02-02 07:27 · Score: 2

The fact that ARM is doing such theoretical research and trying to turn it into practical applications is excellent. However, they might want to consider investigating the use of this memory in non-CMOS applications, particularly for sensors. Nobody is going to make a 5nm bulk CMOS node - we've hit the Last Node at 14nm.
1. Re:Might be a waste for bulk CMOS by viperidaenz · 2014-02-02 08:22 · Score: 1
  
  10nm is coming next year... 7nm in 2017. 5nm may be a few years after that.
2. Re:Might be a waste for bulk CMOS by Anonymous Coward · 2014-02-02 11:04 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Except that 16/14nm isn't much more logic dense than 22/20nm. Now we keep making the minimum feature size smaller, but the gate length is about the same size (e.g, FinFet). Of course types of circuits scale better than others (e.g. rams), but one of the reasons to not scale down is that power wall (it's currently better to have larger devices to minimize static current leakage than have minimum sized devices and melt the silicon as soon as you turn it on).
  At 10nm, quantum tunnelling is a significant impediment to low power operation and there is no established way to bring it to market-level yield (immersion lithography and multi-patterning yield isn't really panning out as well as people have hoped for random logic). We will probably no-doubt see memory devices at 10nm in a year or two, but random logic doesn't seem to be in the cards for a couple years at best, and the original poster may be correct, it may never reach economic sense to use it (if they can't get the leakage under control and it gives about the same random logic density when you use low leakage, larger logic gates) vs a previous more mature 14nm node.
  Intel likes it because their CPU chips are mostly L2/L3 cache rams so they are willing to pay the cost penalty of using a new node, but it may not make sense for others to follow. Even Intel is hedging their bets with larger wafer sizes in their next generation fab to get more production efficiency through the flow rather than totally betting a smaller die size from a smaller geometry process...
Re:The exact goals, duration and budget... by viperidaenz · 2014-02-02 08:02 · Score: 2

Farnsworth invented the smell-o-scope!
Re:The exact goals, duration and budget... by RaceProUK · 2014-02-02 11:40 · Score: 1

Don't forget the Finglonger :)

--
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Re:The exact goals, duration and budget... by viperidaenz · 2014-02-02 12:49 · Score: 1

He didn't actually invent the Finglonger.
He used his What-If machine to find out what would happen if he did invent it.
Re:The exact goals, duration and budget... by RaceProUK · 2014-02-02 15:03 · Score: 2

And in a later episode, he actually had one.

--
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Re:The exact goals, duration and budget... by TheRaven64 · 2014-02-02 21:18 · Score: 1

Individual researchers are less likely to make significant contributions, but small teams still do. Individuals have ideas. Small teams produce proof-of-concept implementations. Larger teams produce working prototypes. Big teams produce finished products. It's hard to compete with a large company when it comes to bringing products to market, but it's quite easy for university research labs to get things to the proof-of-concept stage. They then have the choice of spinning out a company to try to commercialise it or licensing their work to a bigger company who will do the prototype to product bit.

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